The perceptions of translanguaging through English as a lingua franca among international students in Korean higher education

Abstract

This article explores how translanguaging is perceived by a group of international students at a Korean university where not only different first languages (L1) and English (L2) are involved in the students' daily lives but also the local language (L3) holds an important role in the community. Using ethnographic methods, four participants from Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia and South Africa were regularly observed and interviewed in-depth during one academic semester. The findings reveal that the participants had conflicting views towards translanguaging pertaining to their underlying ideologies, that is, whether they considered it as a struggle to use a language or as something natural, fun and cosmopolitan. However, it has been confirmed from this study that whether the participants were positive or negative about translanguaging, it inevitably happened in their daily lives which tells us that the multilingual phenomenon in the field of ELF is worth researching further.